


In Good Faith

by Carrogath



Series: In Sickness and in Health [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/F, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Black Eagles Route, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 09:43:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20618954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carrogath/pseuds/Carrogath
Summary: They enter the Church from one side, and exit out the other.





	In Good Faith

It all started with a question from Mercedes.

“Strange where the Goddess takes us at times. Isn’t it?”

The sentiment had been characteristically understated of her. Mercedes, who to all appearances appeared gentle and forgiving, in reality possessed a sharp tongue and unbending will. She yielded to nothing and no one, and would remain that way forevermore. Ingrid was certain of it, with a confidence that she had found in herself to be increasingly rare these days, when everything seemed so hopeless and confused, when everyone had left their ideals in the dust, and was only fighting to end a war which had dragged on for far too long.

For many months after the beginning of the war, they had fought—fought over the Goddess, for the Goddess was now one in spirit with the professor, fought over the Church, fought over religion. Mercedes seemed to have prepared a response for everything Ingrid could throw at her, and was steadfast in her beliefs, or lack thereof. The war was in a deadlock. The Empire had the greatest chance of winning. Ending the war quickly would ensure the least number of casualties, since they had all failed to prevent it from starting in the first place. They would never have known, five years ago, how vicious the war would be. And yet.

They had become close, since then. Too close, with an intensity that bordered on claustrophobia. They were inextricably linked—they could never escape each other now—and Ingrid had understood long ago that Mercedes was the reason she had defected to the Empire at all. Mercedes had determined her allegiance to the Empire on the basis of sheer, cold-blooded logic. This was no fairy tale. The Empire had been preparing for years for this war, and Edelgard was only a small part of it. Mercedes had no interest in being tethered to the Church, or to the Kingdom, or to the Empire, even. Emile was lost to her, even though the Death Knight was now working alongside them. Her adoptive father was simply that—adoptive. She would have rather lived in a church. But not while the Church was like this.

Soon after they had defected to the Empire, Ingrid had broken down in tears. She had begged Mercedes to return with her to the Kingdom, and fight at King Dimitri’s side. Mercedes refused. Ingrid cursed her naive sense of loyalty, and stayed. She began to wonder if she was in love with her, to remain so stupidly faithful. This was dangerous. This was treason. She must have been infatuated with her. There was no other explanation.

Ingrid was envious, in a way, of Mercedes’ unflinching self-assurance. She wouldn’t have stopped Ingrid from returning home. She wouldn’t have blamed her for leaving the Empire. Mercedes had lived in both countries, had learned to see them as one and the same. To her, every war was a civil war. If Mercedes loved her back, it was the unconditional kind of love. Bargaining with her was like bargaining with the Goddess. There was nothing to be done.

Perhaps Ingrid had remained, selfishly, out of a desire to prove Mercedes wrong. Her fate was not some predetermined thing, inked into a storybook to be dictated back to her. Neither of them were married. Neither of them would marry, unless it pleased them. Mercedes was challenging Ingrid’s beliefs, perhaps as much as she was challenging her own. She had changed since the start of the war. They all had.

And so, Ingrid, feeling contentious for once, replied, “You chose this path. The Goddess had no involvement in your decision whatsoever.”

Mercedes, standing by the altar in the monastery chapel, turned to her and asked, “How can you be so sure?”

_ Because it was not the Goddess who made me this way, but you. Because no goddess I have ever known looks at a battlefield and sees only corpses. Because in Faerghus we had pride for our people, and here we have only shame._

_ Because I sympathized with you, and hated myself for it, and failed to grasp the reason behind either._

They could have been there with him. They could have helped him to recognize his hatred for the childish obstinacy that it really was. But could they have avoided a war, while the Church remained so uncompromising? Or would they have fought and killed in his name, still wholly convinced of their own righteousness?

“Because the Goddess does not pass judgment on mankind. Only we may decide the fates of each other. To shift the blame onto some mystical being whose face we cannot see and whose voice we cannot hear, whose very existence is shrouded in mystery, would be an insult to those who have died defending their families and their homes. They knew why they were fighting. We as humans need no other reason to fight than to defend ourselves, and to defend everything outside of our bodies that make us who we are.” She stepped forward. “Identity is so fragile, Mercedes. I don’t know who I am anymore. But I know that I am not standing here in front of you because some goddess willed it. I am here because I made it so, with my own two hands alone, with all the blood I had to spill and all the lives I had to take to ensure that we could be here now, together, having this stupid, senseless conversation.”

Her face fell, somber, very nearly taken aback. “I hadn’t realized you felt that way.”

“How could you have known, when you never consider the feelings of anyone apart from yourself?” Ingrid caught herself quickly, took it back. “I’m sorry; I just… I know if you were to admit it, then it would break you. I know we need to be strong, for our allies, and for each other. I know this war will never end until there is a clear and decisive victory. But not until now had I realized the unimaginable sacrifice you forced yourself to make to achieve your dream of a peaceful future. For so long, I had believed you to be closed off out of a sense of stubbornness, or arrogance, or misguided responsibility. I thought you had believed yourself to be above the Kingdom, somehow, that the Kingdom’s petty ideas about nobility and knighthood were underneath you. But that isn’t the case at all, is it? You knew this was inevitable. You knew the Church would take up arms, no matter what the reason. And you couldn’t in good conscience fight for the Church knowing that they were only killing people to prove a point.”

She was silent.

“I know now, why I followed you all those years ago. I know why I befriended Dorothea even though we were nothing alike. I am sick and tired of stories where the knight saves the princess and everything turns out right in the end. I am tired of Felix, and Dimitri, and Ashe, and Sylvain all refusing to admit they were wrong about each other—about anything. I hate the concept of knighthood. I hate the nobility. I hate that Glenn died to inspire the murders of innocent people. I hate that in order to resolve our conflicts, for some inscrutable reason, we must fight. I don’t care about being right anymore, Mercedes.” Her voice quavered. “All I want is to start over. I only wish that the process didn’t begin with setting the whole world aflame.”

Mercedes’ eyes widened, so much that Ingrid feared that she might pass out from shock. Then her eyes began to glisten, and she covered her face and broke into muffled sobs, falling to her knees.

Ingrid knelt down beside her, gingerly, unsure of how to console her—unsure of whether she even could. She gasped when Mercedes pulled her into an embrace, but returned it nevertheless, and felt her face wet with tears—not Mercedes’, but her own.

“I’m selfish, Ingrid,” she whispered. “I only invoke the Goddess’s name when I want something, or when I want to express thanks for what I already have. When you told me you weren’t leaving, my first thought was, ‘Oh. The Goddess must have brought her to me.’ Isn’t that terrible?”

“No.” Ingrid wiped the tears from Mercedes’ face, and pressed their foreheads together and laughed. “Not at all.” She felt the words swelling up from her chest, threatening to leap off her tongue and burst out of her mouth. “Mercedes, I must tell you—”

“Shh.” She pressed a finger to Ingrid’s lips.

Ingrid pulled her hand away from her mouth. “But why?”

“I can’t.” She looked away, sheepishly. “If you say it, then I won’t. I’ll forget everything I ever learned and I’ll just… I’ll just want to take you by the hand and run somewhere far away, and I won’t want to help anyone else ever again.”

“Oh,” Ingrid said, and then laughed again. “I had been wondering whether my feelings were so one-sided. I’m pleased to hear that you still have some sentimentality left in you.”

Mercedes looked at her, then, blinking away the last of her tears. “How did you… When did you realize…? That is, I was so sure you were…”

“Then I’m happy to have proven you wrong for once.”

Mercedes looked as though she had taken offense to that, and Ingrid couldn’t tell whether she was feigning it or not. “You don’t mean to say that you’ve been hiding your feelings from me this entire time?”

Ingrid buried her face in Mercedes’ shoulder and laughed. “Of all the things… If you won’t allow me to give voice to it, then at least accept it as the unspoken truth. How could I even be hiding my feelings if you refuse to acknowledge them at all?”

Mercedes pushed her away, pouting. “Ingrid!”

She smiled at her. “What?”

“I… resent the fact that you’ve done nothing but contradict me today.”

“I see.” She shifted her legs so that she was lounging on the chapel floor, rather blasphemously. “Then how may I repent for such a grave and terrible transgression?”

“Kiss me.”

Ingrid stared at her. “I-in the chapel?”

“We can go outside if you’d prefer.” Mercedes gestured at their surroundings. “Though considering that it’s been falling apart all around us already…”

“I understand,” she said, and leaned in.

**Author's Note:**

> we were robbed of an Ingrid/Mercedes paired ending where they grow up to be hardcore rebel spinsters who spread the gospel of feminism all across the land
> 
> seriously how do they not have an A support where they're just straight up like "hey you wanna get married? me neither let's elope"


End file.
